


How to Appreciate Quality Engineering

by Chex (provetheworst)



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Clint Has Issues, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 00:54:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2753543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/provetheworst/pseuds/Chex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just because he doesn't know shit about engineering doesn't mean Clint can't appreciate Bucky's metal arm. It's a work of art, and maybe Clint has kind of a thing for it. And maybe he has a thing for Bucky in general. It's fine. Totally fine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Appreciate Quality Engineering

**Author's Note:**

> this entire fic was an excuse to write porn about the metal arm. i'm pretty sure that the way i am using the 'clint has issues' tag is not how that tag is supposed to be used, but that's ok. the only issues he has in this story are related to his fixation on the metal arm being a weird sex thing.

"What are you looking at?" Bucky asks. He's not the most talkative person Clint's worked with, so him saying something of his own volition surprises Clint bad enough that Clint takes a half step backwards, trips over a cable, and nearly falls on his ass.

Bucky grabs him by the wrist. The metal hand is, in fact, sort of cold. At least Bucky looks amused at his predicament.

"You okay there? Seriously, what is it?" Bucky lets go of Clint's wrist and lifts his arm, peering at his side. "I was worried I had deodorant stains on my shirt or something, then I remembered I don't wear any on this side."

"You don't - what?" Clint asks. "What are you talking about?"

"This thing doesn't exactly sweat," Bucky says. He taps at his arm. “So I don’t wear deodorant on this side?”

Clint opens his mouth, then closes it. He takes a deep breath, head listing to one sidein confusion. "What are you talking about."

"You were staring," Bucky explains again, patiently, like he's talking to a very young, very stupid child. "So I made a joke to try and get you to stop, which clearly isn't working."

"Oh," Clint says. "Hey, I'm good at jokes."

"Everybody keeps telling me that."

Clint is a grown man, and a professional. He's been possessed. He's fought aliens. Half his paycheck each month goes to strip clubs. He has no excuse for being so fixated on one single feature of one single person, because he's got all sorts of other outlets.

It's just - Bucky turns his attention back to his sniper rifle, and the arm recalibrates itself with a whir of internal mechanisms and the sound of metal shifting against itself, and Clint is staring again.

"You know who else is good at jokes?" Clint asks.

"Who?"

"I don't know how I was gonna finish that," Clint finally admits, after a pause that lasts entirely too long. "I, uh. After this you wanna ... go to ... see who's good at jokes?"

Bucky turns and stares at him. The guy is almost as good at passing judgment on people as Natasha.

"I mean comedy," Clint says. "This is New York. There's people pushing their comedy nights, like, every thirty feet. My apartment is covered in flyers. I can never turn those guys down. I never go, but they push the flyers at you, and it's like, what are you supposed to do? You have to take them."

"Shh," Bucky says, turning his attention back to the location they're monitoring. "Our last guy's finally on the move. Soon as he leaves, you go in."

"Got it," Clint says. "And forget I asked about -”

"No, yeah, jokes," Bucky says. "We can do that."

"What are you doing?" Clint asks, somewhat wary, as Bucky unlocks his phone.

Not Clint's phone. Clint's phone is dead because he forgot to charge it overnight.

Bucky has a cellular telephone with a touchscreen that he's just unlocked and now he's typing on it, one-handed. "Texting Steve."

"Steve has a cell phone?"

"He's old, not dead," Bucky says.

"You have a cell phone."

"Yeah, see, I'm also old," Bucky says. "But also not dead."

Clint keeps an eye on the target, but he can’t let this subject drop just yet. He can wait a bit and it won’t blow the mission. "What are you texting Steve for?"

"You wanted to go to some comedy thing," Bucky says. There’s a surprising amount of humor in his voice. "Which I'm guessing was just an excuse to hang out, but I figured I'd let him know I won't be home."

"Oh."

"We were gonna get pizza," Bucky says. "Unless you wanted to get pizza with me and Steve instead."

Clint thinks about this.

"There's this place I found on Grubhub the other week," Bucky starts, eyes back on his phone.

"I don't know what that is."

"You can order food on it. There's an app," Bucky says. "But they've got really good pizza, is the point. Five stars on Yelp."

"You write Yelp reviews, don't you. You're the kinda person who writes Yelp reviews."

Bucky shrugs. "Maybe. I’m surprised you even know what Yelp is? So what's the plan here?"

"You're the one with the fancy phone," Clint says. "Find something for us to do."

"I'm gonna text Steve first," Bucky says, placidly, as he resumes typing. “And you should probably go get our target, huh?”

“Oh, right.”

\-- 

Bucky puts a hand over his shoulder. "Would it make you more comfortable if I covered up the star? Less Soviet. You got some lingering grudge about the Cold War I should know about? Wait, wait, no, did I kill your family?"

"No, no," Clint says. "They managed that just fine on their own."

"Then what's your problem?" Bucky leans back in his chair, crossing his arms, all the while making sure to keep the star covered up.

"I don't have a problem," Clint says. "I mean, I have a lot of problems, but no problems specifically related to communism."

"I could wear short sleeves if it'd make you more comfortable.” Bucky moves to pick up his glass of water, then catches himself and uses the other arm, keeping his eyes deliberately on Clint the whole time.

Clint tries not to laugh and fails, shaking his head. He looks away from the arm, watching the ground instead. "It's just - y'know. Engineering."

"Engineering." Bucky shakes his head. "You fight with a bow. What’m I supposed to think you know about engineering?"

“I don’t know shit about engineering,” Clint says. “Doesn’t mean I can’t admire it.”

Bucky’s eyebrows inch up his face, bit by bit. "Oh, you admire my arm now, is that it?"

"Sure," Clint says. "It's nice. It's a good arm."

Bucky leans back and stares up at the ceiling. Clint does, too; the tiles are white, textured in the way of generic ceiling tiles everywhere. Neither of them says anything for a while and Clint finds himself watching the door to the kitchen as they wait for their food. Finally, Bucky speaks again, on a new topic now. "So about the future."

"What about it? You're here." Clint opens up his arms, and hits a guy in the face. Ten minutes of apologies later, Clint finally says, "The future."

"Yeah, I was gonna ask you something."

"Okay. Ask."

Bucky’s watching him the same way he watches mission objectives, with a deep focus that’s slightly terrifying."What do you actually want to do tonight?"

Clint does his best not to look intimidated. He is totally, absolutely casual when he asks,"What do you mean?"

Bucky’s teeth worry at his lower lip, and Clint looks down at the table. Service at the restaurant is so fucking slow. He’d kill for his meal to be here as a proper distraction. "I mean is going to see some asshole tell jokes what you actually want to do after we eat, or what?"

"We don't have to," Clint says. "There's movies. I don't know."

"But you want to, you know, hang out."

"Yeah," Clint says. "As long as you're not going to write a Yelp review on it."

"On - hanging out?" Bucky’s eyes narrow, mouth twisting in what appears to be genuine confusion.

Clint shrugs.

"You can't review that," Bucky says. "I'm pretty sure that's not something you can review."

"Like I know shit about what you can review. You're so good with computers, you do it," Clint says. “Start a website to review - you know. Uh. People. People you might hang out with.”

"Hangoutrater.com," Bucky says. "I'll get right on that."

\--

Two months, several missions and three shitty open-mic comedy nights later, Bucky says, "Hey, I had a question."

"Shoot." Clint retrieves the last of his arrows from the practice target, and deposits them in his quiver again. When Bucky gets conversational, that usually means the time for target practice is over. Sometimes he’ll keep shooting things just to bug Bucky, but Bucky seems genuinely interested in conversation and Clint does occasionally like to talk with him in ways that won’t piss him off. Bucky’s a decent friend. Decent at other things, also.

With a dingy-looking rag, Bucky wipes down a few of his knives. Clint doesn’t remember him even using them. "You remember two months ago, when I said I had a question about the future?" 

"No. Was my answer any good?"

"I never got to ask my question, so no, but now's a better time to ask anyway."

"Go for it," Clint says.

"So we've seen a lot of movies, you and me," Bucky says. Now he’s cleaning under his fingernails with the tip of a knife that he just cleaned a few seconds ago. "Heard a lot of shitty jokes. Eaten a lot of pizzas."

"Lucky's eaten at least ten percent of those pizzas," Clint says. He shoulders his bow and heads for the door, turning his head to make sure Bucky’s following. "But yeah."

Of course Bucky’s following. Bucky even hustles a few steps to get the door for him. Bucky finished shooting a lot sooner than Clint was ready to be done this afternoon but he stuck around. In an attempt at walking and watching Bucky at the same time, Clint nearly runs into a doorframe, so he misses Bucky’s expression when he next speaks: "Used to be, I wanted to date some girl, I'd ask her dancing, but you're no girl, and I can't really picture you dancing.”

Clint looks down at his shoes as he walks. "This is getting weird."

Bucky doesn’t miss a beat, just keeps walking and talking. "So my question is - I mean, it's not even the same question, but it's related - people don't go steady anymore in the future, right? Or you don't call it that."

Clint smiles at the ground, though the ground doesn’t appreciate it. "You've seen enough movies to know the answer here.”

"Right, it's all just variations on dating," Bucky says quickly. "So the real question is, and I'm going to be old fashioned here, do you wanna go steady, Clint Barton? And keep in mind I never once asked anybody this before. Not once."

"Do I want to go steady," Clint says. They reach the end of the hall, where it splits off to the left and right. Clint runs right into the wall. He wobbles back, rubbing at his nose. "With you."

Bucky laughs, steadying Clint with a hand on his shoulder. He turns Clint around to face him. "Yeah, sure."

Clint runs a hand through his hair, his smile off-center. "You know I'm not a girl, right?"

"No, really?" Bucky laughs. "Okay, okay, fine, I'm kidding, I'm kidding."

"Did they even have -- y'know -- back in the old days, were there ..."

Bucky says, "Are you asking if we had gay people in the forties?"

"Yeah."

"Yes," Bucky says.

"I'm just checking," Clint says.

“And I’m not really…” Bucky trails off with a half-assed shrug. “I don’t know what I’d call myself.”

“But you’re asking me to go steady.”

“If you want,” Bucky says. “Or we can pretend this never happened, which is honestly sounding better by the minute. Hey, SHIELD has telepaths, don’t they? Wanna just erase the memory of this?”

“We’re not going to Eternal Sunshine it, bro,” Clint says. At Bucky’s blank look, he says, “That’s a movie, and we’re not doing it.”

“Okay,” Bucky allows. “So none of that thing.”

“It’s just, we’ve never even held hands, let alone. I didn’t know you -”

“God damn it,” Bucky says. “This was stupid.”

“No, no, it’s not stupid, I just had no idea,” Clint says. “Aw, man.”

Bucky says, “It’s been a while since I put the old fashioned Barnes charm on anybody, you know? At least that I can actually remember.”

“You and Nat -”

“It was weird,” Bucky says. “It was really weird. I can barely remember anything. They wiped me good.”

“Well, I mean.” Clint’s gaze drops. “If you want to go steady, we can go steady. Aw, man, I haven’t heard anybody use that phrase in forever. Last time was probably in some movie.”

“I know, I know.” Bucky covers his face with his hands briefly, then drags them down to uncover his eyes, looking up at the ceiling as if it will offer him some assistance. “I’m doing what I can with the slang, you know? I gotta fit in, it’s just -”

“It’s fine, it’s cute,” Clint says.

“You’re always looking at me,” Bucky says. “I wasn’t too off base there, right? I didn’t fuck up that bad?”

“You didn’t fuck up that bad.”

“Thank god,” Bucky says. He lets himself eye Clint - really get a good, proper ogle in - and a corner of his mouth twitches upward. “If we’re gonna be going steady, we might as well get to - whaddaya call it now, it ain’t necking.”

“Making out?”

“Sure, that, yeah,” Bucky says.

“Stop acting like you don’t know the words for things and we can,” Clint decides.

-

“I feel like we’ve had this conversation before.” Bucky has his mouth close enough to Clint’s neck that he can feel Bucky’s lips move with every word. Both hands rest lightly at Clint’s waist; he lets the right wander, fingers digging into the meat of Clint’s ass. The left he keeps very still. “But seriously, what’s your issue with the arm? It’s not evil. It’s an arm.”

“I don’t have an issue with it. Still,” Clint says. His fingers curve around Bucky’s - right - side. “I swear I continue to have absolutely zero issues related to your arm.”

“So you avoid my left side like the plague because …”

“Becaaaaaaause,” Clint says. He reaches out and almost, but doesn’t quite, touch the place where metal joins skin. His fingers brush against the metal bicep and then he “Uh. It’s - cold?”

“It’s not even that cold if I’ve been inside,” Bucky says. Pulling his hand away, he shakes his arm out, flexes his fingers. “Plus it warms up quick. I don’t know what to tell you.”

Clint looks away and shrugs.

“Is it - look. It’s part of me,” Bucky says. “And pretending it doesn’t exist is sort of creepy.”

“It’s more …” Clint pauses, face screwed up in an extended wince. “I thought you’d be self conscious about it?”

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know! Nazis!”

“Nazis,” Bucky repeats.

“Sure.” Clint hides his face against Bucky’s shoulder. The metal’s cold against his cheek. For a moment he goes stiff, then he turns his face.

Bucky’s left arm doesn’t have the same sort of sensation as his other one. He can judge pressure and has a rudimentary sense of temperature, of moisture levels, of whether or not it’s sustained damage. If it needs calibration, he knows. An ache like pain lets him know if further repair is needed, and most of it can be self diagnosed. 

When they sent him on missions, they wound him up and sent him off like a clockwork soldier. He was expected to keep going until his mission was done, and that included maintenance when necessary, to whatever extent he could manage. That was knowledge they gave him and programmed in over and over without ever taking it away.

He knows his arm in intimate detail, and he cannot feel anything especially intimate with it. His fingertips don’t pick up the same fine detail that those of his right can manage. The data comes in lower fidelity.

Still: there is light pressure and there is warmth. Bucky knows that much.

“You want to know a secret?” Genuine nervousness tinges Clint’s voice when he asks. “Promise you won’t tell.”

“I’m good at secrets,” Bucky says. “It comes with the territory. Go ahead.”

“My issue,” Clint says, “with the arm.”

“Thought you didn’t have any.”

“I might have lied,” Clint says. “My issue with the arm is how much time I’ve spent thinking about how it’d feel inside me. Not the whole thing, wow, that came out weird -”

“So my arm is too attractive, is that the problem?” Most nights, he’s been wearing a glove on his left hand more out of courtesy than anything else. Now he drags it off, slowly. Whether he wears it or not makes little difference to him; the glove sometimes makes it slightly easier to grip smooth objects, giving him better traction, but when it comes to touching skin there’s no reason for it, especially now that he knows it doesn’t actually bother Clint..

“Yeah.”

“You’re not kidding.” Bucky grins, and gets hold of Clint’s chin, forcing Clint to look him in the eye. It doesn’t take much effort. “All this time I thought it freaked you out, and you were just staring because, what, it got you off?”

“Kind of, yeah.” Not that Bucky blames him, but Clint still sounds sheepish, flushed red all the way down to his collar bones. 

Twisting his hand slightly, Bucky slides his thumb up and lets it press against Clint’s mouth. Clint’s lips part, slightly, and his tongue slides wetly against the metal. Even though there’s not much sensation, the way Clint’s eyes narrow and his heartrate jumps is enough for Bucky.

“Kind of,” Bucky mutters as he slips a finger into Clint’s mouth. That makes Clint’s eyes roll back for a moment, rapturous, before regaining focus - strictly downcast, watching Bucky’s hand and wrist intently. 

Bucky watches, too. The way Clint’s lips stretch around his fingers reminds him of how Clint’s mouth looks on his dick, only it looks like Clint’s having a better time of it now. Not that Clint’s ever looked unhappy to be sucking Bucky off - he usually looks pretty fucking into it, actually - but this is a step above.

The ghost sensation of Clint’s mouth around his finger, the registering of light pressure/damp environment, doesn’t, on its own, trigger any particular reaction. It’s more the knowledge, the imagination of feeling, that sends a shiver down Bucky’s spine.

Clint closes his mouth around Bucky’s finger and the sensation now is slightly more pressure, light suction, as Clint sucks at it. Then nothing, when Clint pulls his mouth off, the finger now glistening with saliva.

Bucky watches Clint’s face thoughtfully.

“Can you, uh,” Clint says. His pupils have gone large and he breathes shallow through his mouth.

Bucky lets his fingers brush against Clint’s cheek, thumb resting on his chin for a moment. Then he drags the metal hand down - skating over the line of Clint’s throat, lingering briefly in the dip of Clint’s collar bones. Pushing a little too-hard at the sternum before drifting sideways. Bucky’s hand goes down Clint’s side, then around to dig into the muscle of Clint’s ass, nice and firm underneath.

“Can I what?” Bucky asks, grinning.

“I don’t know how to make this sound sexy,” Clint says, almost laughing. Bucky squeezes, and that makes Clint squirm. The sensors in the arm tell him there’s slight motion under his hand - muscle tensing and untensing, Clint moving his leg slightly. All of this is obvious enough on its own. 

Bucky wants to kiss Clint, so he does, though he keeps it light and brief, repeated little brushes of his lips against Clint’s mouth, to give Clint a chance to ask.

“Fine, fine,” Clint says. “I want your fingers up my ass, are you happy now?”

“You only had to ask,” Bucky says.

“Fuckin’ brat.”

“I wasn’t gonna just assume -”

“Shush,” Clint says. “Where’s the lube?”

“I got Vaseline -”

“Vaseline, he says. Seriously?” Clint snorts as Bucky moves to rummage through the nightstand. He’s got a lot of junk accumulated in the drawer, somehow - not having to be meticulously organized has been kind of nice, in certain ways. In others, it’s frustrating, like when you’re trying to find a little yellowy tub of petroleum jelly and keep running into scissors and books and receipts and unloaded guns. Also a knife. There’s definitely a knife in there that Bucky scrapes his skin up on. His left hand’s occupied feeling up Clint.

Bucky ends up rolling off Clint entirely just so he can look, though he only does so reluctantly, sparing a fond glance at Clint before focusing on a search that’s far easier when he can see what he’s doing. “You got a problem with Vaseline?”

“No, no, nothing,” Clint says. He lies back on the bed, arms behind his head as he watches Bucky. He rocks his hips from side to side and shifts his weight, trying to figure out a good position. One hand drifts absently to his dick, stroking it unhurriedly. “Not like we need a condom for this. It’s just old fashioned.”

“If you didn’t notice, I’m kind of old-fashioned myself.”

“I noticed, all right,” Clint says, right as Bucky finally hits paydirt and finds the Vaseline. 

Bucky pops the lid off quick, pulls away from Clint so he can dig his metal fingers deep in the tub and get them slicked up. “Old fashioned,” Bucky says, more to himself than anything. “If that’s what they’re calling fingering a guy’s asshole these days, I guess.”

“Wait,” Clint says, holding up a hand. He stares at Bucky’s fingers, now covered in a thick coat of Vaseline. “That’s not gonna mess anything up, is it?”

Bucky looks at his own hand with brief consternation. He flexes his fingers a few times, then shrugs. “It better not, or you’re paying for repairs.”

“If anybody asks, you were … doing …”

“Something other than you?” Bucky asks, deadpan.

“Yup.”

“Aw, Clint, I’m hurt.” Bucky grins, climbing back onto the bed and leaning over Clint to kiss him, quick. “You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” Clint decides, taking in a big, slow breath and then letting it out slow and measured to relax a little more.

Bucky reaches down, letting his fingers brush up against Clint’s balls then on down against the thin skin leading back. Clint shivers, laughing, and that gives Bucky pause. “Y’sure?”

“Cold,” Clint says, his voice rough. He swallows hard, licks his lips. “It’s fine, it’s - yeah. If you could just go for it, that’d be great.”

Because of the lack of sensation, Bucky takes it very, very slow. His hand registers pressure, but that’s not as responsive as he’d really like. Clint trembles, breathing shallow, eyes screwed shut.

“Fuck,” Clint says. “Ah, no, keep on - there we go. Keep going.”

“How you feeling?”

“Good.” Clint laughs, all rough and unsteady. “Real good. It’s - weird.”

“Mmhm,” Bucky says, and lets his finger slide all the way in. There’s some resistance, but not enough that he’s worried. He watches Clint’s face the whole time, the way Clint’s throat moves as he swallows.

One thick metal finger isn’t enough on its own, Bucky figures. As he drew it out, he goes ahead and unfolds a second, making sure to keep them both straight, the metal joints lying flat against each other so they won’t get caught.

This was obviously not one of the intended functions of his arm, but that’s not stopping either of them. And it seems to be working fine - Clint’s panting under him, hips twitching to meet the slow, patient slide of Bucky’s fingers.

Bucky grins down at him.

“Bastard.” Clint sounds fond. “You know how to use that thing or what?”

“It’s my first time,” Bucky says dryly, emphasizing the final word with a forceful thrust of his fingers. Not too forceful; he has to be careful. With this arm, he’s ripped doors off their hinges, punched dinosaurs in the face, and tried to choke Captain America. There’s a degree of control involved that has him slightly wary.

“Your what.”

Bucky starts laughing. “Nobody’s wanted this thing inside them before, that’s all, I’ve had sex. Shit, I’ve had sex with you. C’mon.”

“Okay, okay, jeez,” Clint says. He bites down on his lower lip as Bucky twists his fingers inside him. “S’good.”

“Not as cold now, huh?”

“Nope,” Clint drawls. He has his hands fisted up in the sheets, and his eyes drift shut, lips parted. He hasn’t shaved in a day or two, but Clint’s never been great at doing that regularly, from what Bucky can tell. 

Bucky won’t lie - he’s always liked looking at Clint’s face, whatever Clint’s doing. There’s something special about getting to see Clint like this, though, stretched out across the bed for him, and all his expressions caused by what Bucky’s doing to him. Bucky likes it, knowing he can make somebody else react this way.

Clint groans, and Bucky takes that as a cue to add another finger. He’s careful with it, says, “Okay?” as he lets all three slide in, and Clint nods frantically. Clint’s cheeks are a feverish red, the blush spreading up to his ears and all the way down his neck.

Bucky presses a kiss to his sternum, then his throat. Clint’s skin is hot and dry. As Bucky continues to fuck him with his fingers, he leans up to kiss Clint properly, and allows for himself a moment of gratitude.

He’s alive, and - not okay, necessarily, but better, and god, but the future’s weird that this is how he’s spending his time. Three fingers deep in another man’s asshole, and genuinely happy about it.

“You know what I like?”

“Aww, no,” Clint mumbles right up against his mouth. “Don’t make it weird -”

Bucky snorts, only barely holding back further laughter. He bends his wrist rather than try to curve his fingers, angling now for Clint’s prostate, which earns him a wide-eyed stare and a goofy little croaking noise. “The future.” 

“The fuck.” Clint sighs, and wiggles a bit under Bucky. He gets his arm in between them and starts jerking himself off, rhythm a bit erratic.

“You want me to get that?”

“Nah, you focus on, y’know,” Clint says, so Bucky shrugs and keeps at it. He figures Clint knows well enough what it’ll take for him to get off. Clint’s been getting himself off a lot longer than Bucky’s been helping out, after all.

He would like to see, sometime, if he can get Clint off just on this. Not right now, though.

Bucky pushes himself up on his knees, trying to figure out if there’s a way to keep his balance while fucking Clint with his fingers and jerking himself off. He’s hard, too, and wouldn’t mind doing something about it.

Clint watches him, narrow-eyed, mouth twitching up into a crooked smile. “Look at you. Goddamn.”

Bucky shivers; the servos of his arm whine, and there’s some minor adjustments and calibrations, mostly confined to the upper arm. He has to keep his fingers from recalibrating just yet.

“God, fuck,” Clint says. The sound of skin on skin as he jerks himself off speeds up, and Bucky looks down, watches him. He’s avoided, mostly, looking at Clint’s dick tonight, because it’s easy, from there, to look a hair further and see the gleam of metal disappearing inside flesh, which - Bucky’s breath catches.

He’s not really sure why he was so worried about seeing this. He knows what he’s doing, but seeing it properly means acknowledging it. Even as his own right hand slows to a stop in his only just-started effort at getting himself off, he feels himself slipping right over the edge.

Just. There’s this mechanism designed to kill that Bucky’s put inside Clint. The same arm that has assassinated whole families is stretching Clint open; Bucky’s got a good rhythm going, has found how to hit Clint’s prostate with each glide of his metal fingers. The level of trust involved leaves Bucky somewhat in awe, and his cock jumps in his hand.

He spills come all across Clint’s stomach, and Clint tells him, “Good, yeah, good.” Bucky breathes heavy through his nose and closes his eyes as he rides it out. The metal arm’s moving on automatic, at this point, repetitive motion that Bucky set to repeat. Even as his coordination fails, the arm does not.

He’s not going to tell Clint that bit, though.

It doesn’t take too much longer after Bucky gets off for Clint to do the same. “Fuck, fuck,” Clint says. He’s very talkative, if not particularly eloquent. It makes up for Bucky’s quiet.

Most of Clint’s come streaks his own stomach, criss-crossing the stripes Bucky’s orgasm left there earlier. Bucky, with sleepy-eyed satisfaction, watches.

“Gimme a tissue,” Clint says, waving his hand toward the nightstand. “I wanna sleep.”

Bucky lets his fingers slip free at last with a wet sound, and then gets a couple of tissues. He wipes Clint off, first, then scrubs a bit at his hand, which is still a little sticky with Vaseline.

He makes a face. “I gotta wash my hands. Soap maybe?”

“Good call,” Clint says.

The thing is, petroleum jelly wipes off fairly easily. It’s just gotten in some of the finer joints. Bucky could probably just leave it, but that seems decidedly unhygenic, so he’s left standing in front of the sink, water running, picking at metal seams with his fingernails.

After a while, he hears Clint walk up behind him, bare feet scraping against the tile floor. “What’s up?”

“Hi,” Bucky says. “So that was.”

“I was into it,” Clint says. “If you weren’t -”

“No, that was good,” Bucky says. He doesn’t turn around.

Clint wraps his arms around Bucky’s waist, and rests his chin on Bucky’s shoulder, watching him in the mirror. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. He meets Clint’s gaze in the reflection for a moment, smiling, then ducks his head. The smile doesn’t go away. “I promise I’m not avoiding you. We gotta figure out something besides Vaseline next time, though.”

“You’re the one who kept acting like it was a good idea.”

“Ah, shut the hell up.”


End file.
